Over at Archaeology News, Jasmyne Pendragon (gotta love that name!) has posted the first and second installments of a three part series on “The Purpose of Aztec Blood Rituals.” Helpfully, the articles contain numerous citations and complete references. In part one, Pendragon briefly sets the historical stage before laying out the details of Aztec beliefs:
The [...]
Tags:Aztec Indians·Aztec sacrifice·Aztecs·blood·blood rituals·bloodletting·bloodlust·cannibalism·conquest·ecology·economy·emic·empire·etic·Jasmyne Pendragon·Valley of Mexico
When attempting to determine whether something is “natural ” (vis-a-vis yesterday’s post on Catholicism and homosexuality) one good way of investigating the issue is to use the genealogical method. So far as I can tell, there are no hunter-gatherer or pre-Neolithic societies that had taboos against homosexuality. We can therefore trace the history of the [...]
Tags:Assyria·Assyrian Empire·Aztec sacrifice·Babylolian captivity·Catholicism·Christians·demographics·demography·early Christianity·Egyptian captivity·fertility·group size·Hebrews·homosexuality·India's sacred cow·Jewish diaspora·Jews·Judaism·Levant·Lost Tribes of Judah·marriage·Marvin Harris·Mesopotamia·Michael Harner·Mormons·natural law·persecution·pork eating proscription·procreation·prohibition against homosexuality·Ralph Tanner·ritual regulations·same-sex preference·sin of sodomy·slavery·sodomy·taboo·taboos·The Social Ecology of Religion·Vernon Reynolds·warfare
